Blocking a child's physical development.

In a recent entry on his Human Nature Blog, William Saletan called attention to the "Ashley Treatment"—a medical procedure designed to freeze the physical development of brain-damaged children. SpecialParent, whose child is a candidate for the treatment, writes in to defend the procedure from its detractors:

We were overjoyed to learn about the "Ashley Treatment," or growth attenuation. […] A billion dollars could not bring as much happiness to our child in goods and services as being small and cuddled like the baby she believes she is. Attenuating her growth would not violate the Hippocratic Oath; to the contrary, NOT attenuating her growth would knowingly cause her increasing distress and unhappiness as her "activities" became limited per her size ("activities" including cuddling and holding and carrying, given her immobility), not to mention the increasing chance of injury to her during care and transfers. Like some children with brain damage, her head is infant-sized and will never grow. While we don't care if society is uncomfortable seeing an adult with an infant-sized head, we do care that her tiny nasal passages already labor to provide enough oxygen to a child. And what about her infant-sized feet that do not grow with the rest of her, how will they support an adult body? Given the stature of other family members, she may very well be six feet tall in adulthood.

The arguments that parents will stunt their children's growth willy-nilly are exaggerated and ignorant. Before our child's growth might ever be attenuated we will have to convince an ethics panel of dozens of medical professionals, who will be looking for every reason why not. There will not be growth-stunting clinics on every street corner. The arguments that we should let nature take its course, that we shouldn't fix the child to compensate for society's shortcomings, or that we shouldn't take any measures for "convenience" are hypocritical. Babies are created and selected by fertilization, birth dates planned, induced, born by C-section, fed formula, and scheduled for convenience. As they grow older, their short stature is enhanced, tonsils are removed, and plastic surgery performed to correct anything nature didn't do right or to be more acceptable to society. […] No matter how utopian our society, our daughter would still be happier child-sized so that she can be close to us, as I imagine Ashley will be. […]

Thank you to Ashley's family for voluntarily subjecting themselves to worldwide public scrutiny. They have given us hope that our child may be happy and healthy in life, and that's what every parent wants.

Fraysters have taken positions for and against the use of this procedure, but both sides seem to agree that the whole concept is unsettling. Eigenvector (not a fan), exclaims: "this is not Eugenics, this is something out of an H.P. Lovecraft story." Caromer (a supporter) concedes "'pillow angel' is a creepy term."

To marylb, the case of "Ashley X" says more about the medical profession than about parents:

To me the issue is about the medical community acting on expediency, which is ethically troubling. That parents of children with needs are left with few alternatives is certainly true, but does that mean the known reality of these children growing up should be altered? Where is the line drawn for the medical community if indeed expediency is factored in and the medical world tries to make up for lack of services? Where is the definitive line drawn that controls the medical concept?

I only know that I don't know the answer.

Amen to that. If you have thoughts on this subject, please share them with us in the Human Nature Fray. GA … 12:05am PT

Sunday, Jan. 7, 2007

Responding to Daniel Gross' largely optimistic assessment of Whole Foods' potential for profitability despite recent declines in its stock price, some Fraysters took great interest—and in some cases, pleasure—in analyzing the chain's downturn.

In this top 10 list of reasons not to buy Whole Foods' stock, baltimore-aureole points out the "inherently limited … number of people willing to pay $5 a pound for tomatoes which are indistinguishable from non-organic," the absence of "local advertising," "lousy locations," and the need to shop elsewhere for mainstream and practical items such as "diet coke, chicken nuggets, and detergent, etc." johnboy779 highlights the affordability of Trader Joe's "as a significant reason why Whole Foods is taking such a hit" in his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. messyONE unleashes an extended diatribe over its "cramped, dirty, and crowded" shopping venues and the frequently "rotting produce" in its bins, while diogene cites larger economic trends for the chain's recent slump: "meager economic recovery of the past 5 years has been consumer-driven all the way, and the consumer--even the affluent consumer--is feeling more than a little tapped out by now."

Pondering the connection between food and spirituality, revrick seeks to explain Whole Food's success in appealing to the holier-than-thou "devotees of vegetarianism and organic foods":

The whole premise behind stores like Whole Foods is that it manages to pull off making two contradictory claims at once. On the one hand, there is Thorstein Veblen's conspicuous consumption at work here. Shopping at Whole Foods says to the world, "I'm so rich, I can blow scads of money buying over-priced produce." On the other hand, there is a gnostic, elitist denial-of-the-world ethic involved as well. "I shop at Whole Foods, because I am a spirtually evolved sort, who can discern the difference between the pure and the impure, the superior and the inferior. Lesser breeds shop at Redners, I get what's good at Whole Foods."